


of ending disagreements.

by bemusedbicycle



Category: Bridgerton (TV), Bridgerton Series - Julia Quinn
Genre: F/M, Hurt and comfort, and then is interrupted briefly by angst, anthony is an idiot, before returning full throttle to smut, it starts out as smut, that quickly turns into smut, well okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-19 00:20:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29742117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bemusedbicycle/pseuds/bemusedbicycle
Summary: She stares at the empty space next to her, not even an indent pressed into the pillow thanks to the maids that have come and gone and come again in the time since Anthony left. She fingers the fine stitching and smooth satin and chews on the inside of her cheek – unsure and upset and more than a little irritated with the burn of tears pressing behind her eyes.It would be silly to cry. After all, she knew this day would come. She knew at some point she would cease to be a mystery – a challenge, even – and Anthony would find his interest carrying him elsewhere. She knew their time was fleeting.She just didn’t expect it to come so soon.-Post-carriage incident, Kate is healing and Anthony doesn't want to hurt her. She thinks he's an idiot.
Relationships: Anthony Bridgerton/Kate Sharma, Anthony Bridgerton/Kate Sheffield
Comments: 13
Kudos: 179





	of ending disagreements.

She stares at the empty space next to her, not even an indent pressed into the pillow thanks to the maids that have come and gone and come again in the time since Anthony left. She fingers the fine stitching and smooth satin, and chews on the inside of her cheek – unsure and upset and more than a little irritated with the burn of tears pressing behind her eyes. 

It would be silly to cry. After all, she knew this day would come. She knew at some point she would cease to be a mystery – a challenge, even – and Anthony would find his interest carrying him elsewhere. She knew their time was fleeting. 

She just didn’t expect it to come so soon. 

-

It happens in the dark of night, as most troublesome things do. 

But it begins deliciously. A warm, calloused palm drifting across her stomach. Hot breath in her ear. Fingertips against her collarbone before dipping between her breasts, the collar of her nightdress caught and pulled down low. Lower still. Teeth and tongue and – 

“Anthony,” she sighs, and her hands find his hair. She tugs and pulls and keeps him where he is – his mouth on her chest and his body half leaning over her. He is still half asleep, she can tell. He probably wouldn’t be initiating if he were not, but even with sleep making his movements lazy he is formidable and demanding. Her body yearns to be beneath him. Pressed into the bed until she can’t quite move, his fingers tangled between her own, pushing her arms above her head. 

“Kate,” he mumbles, the fog of sleep heavy between them – everything languid and slow and deep. She’d think it a dream if she couldn’t feel the tremble in his hands. The hitch in his breath when she shifts her hips against the heavy material of their quilt. 

“I need – “ she gasps when he bites at her nipple, a low growl caught in his throat. He presses up on his knees at her side, eyes heavy, hair disheveled. He still comes to bed in the nude, and the glow of the fire on his skin makes her belly swoop low in wanting. 

He drags his thumb across her bottom lip, watching his progress with methodical determination. She pulls it into her mouth to taste the salt of his skin and he swallows hard, eyes becoming sharp. Fully awake now. 

“What do you need, Kate?” 

His voice is a rumble the way it always is in their bedroom. Desire and delight and darkness all wrapped in one. She shivers with it and the corners of his mouth tip up into a small smile. 

“A kiss,” she replies, chin tilted up. She wants to be demanding in the way he always is. Greedy and unafraid to ask for what she wants. And oh, how she wants. If she could set that carriage aflame, she would. It’s been too long since she’s been touched by her husband. Her mind races with the possibilities. With a tilt of her head, she acknowledges, “To begin.” 

His smirk spreads into a grin, and she smiles back.

“Ah,” he falls back to the bed and nudges her nose with his. “What an interesting qualification, that – to begin.” 

She catches his face in her hands when he presses a kiss to her chin. Her nose. And then her lips. She keeps him close and licks into his mouth, his groan sweet on her tongue. “I have a plan, you see.” 

He huffs out a laugh, fingers curling around her hip. “You always do.” 

Her plan is that hand of his tugging and pulling at her nightclothes until he can reach bare skin. It’s panting breaths and that groan he makes when she bites at his collarbone. It’s Anthony – always Anthony – undone and unwound and perfectly imperfect in the way he touches her. 

But it does not go to plan. Anthony kisses her again and again and again until she is mindless with it. Mindless for him and the way he moves above her, against her, within her. Mindless enough for her body to move without thought, her hips pressing up, her legs spreading wide, her – 

She cries into his mouth, a sharp stab of pain moving through her leg so quickly she loses her breath. Her nails press into his back with a whimper and the tears come unbidden. It’s just – the pain of it – it pulls at her tighter and tighter – her leg feeling as if someone is trying to sever it clean in two. 

So lost in the anguish of it, she doesn’t feel Anthony move from the bed. She doesn’t hear him throw open the door or bellow down the hall for a doctor to be called, immediately. 

There is only the pain, and his terrified eyes as her maid rushes to her side, his back pressed firmly to the wall, as far away from her as the room allows. 

The doctor arrives, and Anthony is gone. 

-

He does not join her for breakfast. 

Or for tea. 

Or for reading late in the afternoon, as he typically does. 

He does not join her for dinner. 

It is only when she has fallen into a fitful sleep, her arm stretched out to the space beside her, does he slip under the sheets, a careful kiss across the back of her hand. She mutters and tries to shift closer, tangled in sleep, her eyes a bit too heavy to open. The doctor, he gave her something for the pain, and she feels – she feels so tired, now. But Anthony is here. His hand is in hers and he’s – he’s here now. 

She breathes out slowly through her nose. 

“I’m sorry,” she thinks he whispers, his nose pressed beneath her ear.

-

He is gone in the morning. 

He does not join her for breakfast. 

Or for tea. 

Or for reading late in the afternoon, as he typically does. 

He does not join her for dinner. 

But at night he comes to her. Late, long after she falls asleep. Several times she wakes in the middle of the night, reaching for him, her hands gripping his arm so tight she fears he might bruise. And yet, he always manages to slip away just before she wakes. It is like living with a shadow, with a ghost, and she has had quite enough. 

And so she waits. Propped up in bed with her books and her sketch pad and her useless leg, her heart beating a staccato against her chest. She waits until the moon is high in the sky, until creeping footsteps sound just outside the door. 

This fool, sneaking about his own house. 

All to avoid her. 

It makes her frown. 

He slips into their room like the shadow she accused him of being in her mind, taking care to close the door with a whisper, his steps hushed on the plush rug. She watches him move with droll fascination, rather sure she’s never seen him so determined to be silent in all the time she’s known him. 

“You look ridiculous,” she mutters as he attempts an odd sort of balancing move, all in a valiant effort to lift the quilt without disturbing the bed. He jumps and lets out a string of muffled oaths that would have her grinning if she weren’t quite so irritated by his behavior. 

She arches an eyebrow at him. He frowns back at her. 

“You should be asleep,” he grunts, looking for all the world like a spider trapped under a looking glass. He scratches at the back of his head, yawns mightily, and stares at the bed with such abject longing she rolls her eyes. Perhaps a stray puppy is a more apt metaphor. 

“So should you, it would seem. But here you are, sneaking about.” 

He huffs and throws himself into the bed as much a man of his size can toss his body about. Still careful, always so careful, to assure her leg doesn’t move from its stack of pillows. 

“I’m not sneaking about.” 

“I haven’t seen you in days,” she points out and he burrows deeper into the blankets, giving her his back. 

“I’ve been busy,” he mutters, from somewhere deep within his fortress of solitude.

“Oh?” 

“Don’t sound so surprised. I have much to do.” 

“Hm,” she hums. 

“I’ve been checking the ledgers and tending to the estate. And then there was – you know what?” he emerges from deep beneath the coverlet to scowl at her. “I don’t need to explain myself to you.” 

It stings, that. It wedges somewhere between her heart and her gut, its rough edges poking and prodding.

“No,” she replies, folding into herself as best she can. “No, you don’t have to. But I was hoping you might want to.” 

There is still so much they need to learn about one another. She knows he struggles with communication. With telling her what is in his heart and in his mind. She forgets, sometimes, that Anthony has been hurt, too. That he has been dismissed and underestimated and bruised by the carelessness of others. 

The scowl on his face melts as he gazes at her, his hand tentative as he reaches across their blankets and touches his fingertips to hers. His stare dips and holds, where his hand just barely presses over her own. 

“I love the way your skin burns gold in the light,” he whispers. His finger traces the back of her hand, the delicate webbing of vein and bone and muscle, and she feels it everywhere. He sighs, deep and long. “Kate, I must apologize.” 

She swallows, throat tight. “For what?” 

She knows for what. She just doesn’t want to hear it. 

“I –“ his eyes dart up, beseeching, before landing on the crease of her elbow. “I am not sorry for waking and needing you. I will – I will never be sorry for that.” Heat burns in her cheeks, and she feels a tug low in her belly. She had woken up needing him, too. “But I am sorry that my carelessness hurt you.” 

The silence between them rings loud, and she pulls her hand from beneath his. Something in him breaks a bit at that, his shoulders curling in, his head and shoulders dipping low.

This stupid, ridiculous man. 

She tilts his face up with her hands on his cheeks. Presses a kiss to his nose. Rests her forehead against his and breathes in his sigh of relief. 

“Anthony, you hurt me with your absence. More than my leg.” 

He makes a face and she tilts her head back and forth, sure to keep their foreheads pressed tight together. “Alright. Maybe your absence hurts just as much as my leg. But the pain is equal.” 

“Kate, the sound you made, before, when you were hurt. The tears on your cheeks. I couldn’t – I did that to you.” 

“You most certainly did not,” she begins with all the pent up frustration of the past couple days. The past weeks, if she is to be honest. She hates sitting in this bed day in and day out, with nothing but the birds and her books and her thoughts for company. She wants to move. She wants to run. She wants to – 

Hit her damn husband for being so stupid. 

“A runaway carriage did this to me. All you did was make me – make me mindless with wanting you. Anthony, I – “ her hands drift from his cheeks to his jaw, scratching at his beard. Palms pressed down along his body until she finds his shoulders, his skin warm. She swallows against the tightness in her throat and closes her eyes. Thinks of the way he moves above her. The way his eyes heat. How his mouth curls up in delight when she is close to reaching her peak – his fingers searching, pressing, circling. 

“Anthony, I want you so badly I can hardly breathe for it.” 

She asked him once if the way she felt for him meant she was fallen. If this – this desperate longing meant that she were wicked in some way. She blinks open her eyes and gazes at him, the flush high in his cheeks, the thrum in her blood melting with the pulse of her heart.  
If this is wrong – if this is fallen – she does not care. She cannot care. 

For she cares only for this. For the way he makes her feel. For the way he breathes life into her with every touch and breath and kiss. 

His mouth finds hers, a quiet hunger in the way his teeth catch her bottom lip. A bite and then his tongue to soothe, his thumb on her chin tilting her mouth open. His tongue curls around hers with a sigh and she clutches at his shoulders. 

“Please,” she whispers, angling her chin up when his kisses drop to her neck. He sucks hard at her pulse point with her plea. A reward, she thinks, for her honesty. “Please don’t leave me again.” 

She meant to say something else. Perhaps something about his teeth or his tongue or his hands at her hips. But as is always the case with Anthony, her thoughts slip out without the slightest bit of censoring.

He smooths his palm across her cheek, fingers threading through her curls. He holds her there, pinned by his gaze, as serious as the responsibilities that rest heavy on his shoulders. 

“Even when I am not here by your side, my thoughts are with you. My heart, it – “ he dips his chin, bashful. “My heart is always with you.”

His words are whispered, but no less sure, fingertips massaging at her hair. He smiles wistfully, hand drifting to where her hair dips between her shoulder blades. “I love your hair,” he sighs. “Tangled mess as it is.” 

She huffs. “There was hardly reason to tame it, with my husband sneaking about and avoiding me.” 

He arches an eyebrow, ignoring her pointed comment. “You think I mean that in derision, when the opposite is true.” His eyes darken – something primal. Something wicked. His fingers curl into a fist to tug once, just enough for her chin to tip up. She feels the thrill of it in the tips of her breasts. Low, between her legs. “I love to sink my hands in it,” he whispers against her lips. “I love when I wake up surrounded by you, by your smell. Lilies and clean soap and something darker. Something for me.” He drags his nose down her neck and tugs her hair again, sharper this time, her gasp and his smile the question and answer pressed against her skin. 

“I want to take care of you,” he mutters into her collarbone. “But I do not want you to be hurt again.” 

She curls her hands into his hair and holds tight as if her grip alone could keep him for leaving this bed. She wants whatever he is willing to give. Any small morsel. “I will not be hurt,” she sighs, just as his hands abandon her hair and find her chest instead, his thumbs sweeping over the curve of her. Once, twice, and then again. 

“I can be still,” she whispers.

He pulls away and studies her. “Can you?” He asks, quite serious for a man who is slowly inching up the hemline of her nightgown. She holds her body in almost rigid stillness, nothing but the sharp rise and fall of her chest as his fingers dance up her thighs. 

“I can,” she promises, the words broken and stuttered and he slides off the bed, his knees finding the floor, his mouth finding the inside of her knee. 

“I need you to be sure, Kate.” 

But the only thing she is sure of is that she will perish if he does not put his mouth on her. If he does not end this ache between her legs with his lips and tongue. It won’t take her long, surely. All she needs is – 

She gasps when his hand finds purchase on the delicate skin at the inside of her thigh, holding her legs open, holding her broken leg immobile with a firm grasp. She didn’t think she would like that quite so much, being held without even the possibility of movement, but it’s thrilling. Coupled with the way she can only see Anthony’s dark head bowed between her legs in quiet supplication, his pale skin a sharp contrast to her own. She feels as if she is dancing on the edge already. 

“Kate, are you sure?” 

She blinks down at him framed between her splayed legs, one lock of hair falling over his forehead. She smooths it back, threads her fingers through the mess of it and guides his face down to her. 

“Please,” she whispers and his smile is a wicked, wicked thing. 

Just as she thought, it does not take long at all. He keeps his eyes on hers at his tongue finds her heat, a long, broad lick that has her toes curling into the bed sheets. He keeps her broken leg immobile at his side and encourages her other over his shoulder, her knee pressing to his ear, her foot drumming between his shoulder blades. She can feel it when he groans long and deep at her taste, and she is mindless with it. Of the way he presses his face deeper into her. How she can see the flex and release of his shoulder. How she knows that he is touching himself even as he touches her. 

“Anthony, please, I –“ He flicks his tongue back and forth and she pulls taught, a thread about to snap. He pulls back, a sharp exhale, a pant and a curse, before he returns to her again. Everything slick and hot and wet – his tongue – god, his tongue – working circles against her until she is carried higher and higher and – 

She comes quite spectacularly against his mouth, her body unable to move the way she wants. Unable to chase the pleasure or pull away from it and she finds it makes it all the more delicious. It sweeps over her like a tide, starting at the heel of her foot that still presses against Anthony’s back and rolling up her spine until she feels the heat of it everywhere. 

She is still blissful with it as Anthony rises over her, chest heaving, his hand working between his legs. She watches him – the way his forearm flexes with each forceful tug. 

“Yes,” she sighs, and quite brazen, dances her fingertips over her breasts. She plucks at her nipples, delighting in the way Anthony curses violently beneath his breath. Her only excuse is that her release has made her delirious with joy. Uninhibited and unencumbered. “That’s it,” she encourages. 

He chokes out something that sounds like her name and then his chin drops to his chest, warmth painting her stomach as he finds his own release. She’s never been able to watch him so closely, in the moments after. The smile that curls one side of his mouth. The way his hand brushes over her skin, like he just can’t help himself. 

He heaves out a deep sigh, that small tick of a smile spreading from one corner of his mouth to a full grin, until his entire face is alight with it. 

“I resolve we solve all disagreements like this, wife.” 

She smiles in return, and tangles her fingers with his. Presses a kiss to his knuckles. 

“For once, dear husband, we are in agreement.”


End file.
